“There have been times when I’ve got carried away with my behaviours.”
For years now, I have kept an embarrassing secret from everyone I know. I don’t think anyone around me would understand if I told them that I feel compelled to pull out my hair and nails when I feel stressed, anxious or bored. It’s just not something that normal people do. But I’ve done it for years and I don’t know what it would take for me to be able to stop.
My earliest memory of pulling out hair was when I was probably about 13 years old. I’d always had these big, bushy eyebrows that met in the middle and I remember my mum and nan always making comments about wishing they could tweeze them. I never let them, because I was scared of how much it would hurt.
As I got older though, my friends began to pay more attention to how they looked and starting tweezing their own eyebrows. They would suggest me letting them tweeze my ‘monobrow’ at sleepovers and one time I gave in and let them. I can’t say my brows looked any better, and once I got home I tried to fix them as best as I could, pulling put the hairs with tweezers. Strangely I liked the sensation of pulling them out. I only tweezed the section between my brows, but after a few weeks I was pulling out every stray hair I could find and this quickly became an almost daily habit.
Within a few months all I had left were two very thin, hockey-stick shaped lines. I was teased at school but this being the 90s, I wasn’t the only one with ridiculous brows so I didn’t pay much attention. The regrowth was very fast, so I was plucking constantly.
As I got older I began to cover up my overplucking with eyebrow pencil, which made it much less noticeable. By now what was left of my eyebrows was very patchy, and I would even go to sleep wearing eyebrow pencil as I felt so embarrassed by the state of my brows. When I started college, my stress levels went through the roof with the pressure of A levels and getting into university, and I found myself playing with my eyebrows all the time.
This quickly led to me pulling the hairs out with my fingers- the little stabs of pain were soothing and I couldn’t stop. As you can probably imagine, they looked a complete mess and there were many times when I actually had no eyebrows left at all. I was ashamed of what I was doing, but I couldn’t stop. I now have my eyebrows microbladed which covers up most of the damage.
As time went on I added to my strange behaviours, peeling layers off my fingernails until they became thin and brittle. I’ve done this for so long now that my nails are so weak that they split once they get to a certain length. It’s not just my fingernails either. I pick at my toenails, often tearing off the nails from my little toes completely and peeling others down to the quick until they bled. I’ve since learned that this behaviour is called onychotillomania. It’s part of something called body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs) – nail picking, and hair pulling (trichotillomania). I also pull out my eyelashes, but this only tends to happen when I have no eyebrows to pull or nails left to pick.
I started to do some research into BFRBs and realised I have probably been doing a lot of these damaging behaviours for most of my life. Whilst the obsession with eyebrows has lasted for years, some of the behaviours only lasted a short while.
When I was younger I used to bite my nails (onychophagia) and chew the inside of my mouth (morsicatio buccarum) until painful sores formed, something my dentist used to tell me off for. When I felt really stressed I would poke the ulcer with my tongue or eat salty or citrus foods to trigger pain. I would also chew the sides of my tongue (morsicatio linguarum) and whilst I don’t do it anywhere near as much as I used to, it is something I do if I’m in situations where I feel driven to engage in BFRBs but can’t because of the social context.
A lot of people think that because these actions are repetitive they must be a part of OCD, but they aren’t generally thought to be related. There is also debate about whether they are a form of self harm or not. A lot of my behaviours come from anxiety and uncertainty. I’m a teacher and I think it’s become a way of coping with the pressures and stress of the job. My BFRBs get much worse around the time of Ofsted visits, exams and school reports. Luckily because most of what I do isn’t visible, I think I’ve got away with hiding what I do to myself. Kids can be cruel about teachers’ appearances and although I’ve had some comments about my eyebrows, I’ve told the kids that my eyebrows are naturally thin as that’s what happens when you get older, which isn’t really a lie. I pencil in the worst affected areas.
There have been times when I’ve got carried away with my behaviours. I’ve bitten the insides of my cheek so badly that the scar tissue has made it impossible to eat and I’ve sometimes got so fixated on ripping out my toenails that I’ve ended up with infections, damaged nail beds and nails ripped so far down that I can’t walk properly and have struggled to drive because they’re so painful.
It’s stopped me from going out as I can only wear comfy trainers when my toes are healing, not only because ‘going out’ shoes rub and crush my toes but also because my feet are often a bloody, ugly mess thanks to my habit. I never let anyone see my feet for that reason. Even with my boyfriend, I always wear socks to bed. He is aware of what I do but when he first saw my feet, he was shocked and it’s not something we ever really talk about. I don’t think he understands why I do it, but then neither do I so how can I expect him to?
We have been together now eight years and in that time my eyebrows have been both tattooed on with semi-permanent makeup and microbladed. When we first got together, I pencilled my brows on every day and would even draw them back on after washing my face at night so he wouldn’t see my natural brows. It’s expensive to top them up but there is no way I could walk around with my eyebrows in their natural state.
I know that my behaviours are harmful and I wish I could stop. I just don’t know how. I’ve tried things like stress balls to try and take my mind off the urge to pull and pick, but it never works for long. And in my job, avoiding stress and anxiety isn’t an option. I’ve thought about seeing a GP but I don’t even know what I would say. Every time I think about how I would tell them, I just feel embarrassed. I don’t see it as an illness, I see it as a lack of self control. I feel like it’s something I should be able to keep in check. But quite often I catch myself doing it without realising I’m doing it, and that’s what makes it so difficult to manage.
